Big stack poker
As Sun Tzu said thousands of years ago, the good general knows how to choose his battle.
As poker is war, this rule can be applied by any poker player who thrives to become good at poker. Of course we want to win many hands and to lose few. And we want to win large pots and lose small ones. This is the concept of the battle.
Choose your battles wisely, or in other words choose to fight for the right pots and fold in pots where you are not meant to win. This is how you will win the battles, and ultimately the poker war. Make sure to choose the battle where you have a better chance of winning, be it because of your cards, skill level or psychological advantage.
In particular the type of situation where you want to fight many battles is when you are deep stacked, especially in a tournament. If you have an above average stack size, it is not the time to play ultra tight, waiting for monsters. On the contrary you should use your stack as a weapon, as you have the advantage in this respect versus most of your opponents at the table.
This is the case where money will make more money. Each chip is like a bullet, and with a big stack you can easily murder any of your enemies. You need to emphasis that fact and tell them that you mean business if you bet, so that each time they want to fight in a pot with you, their entire tournament life will be at risk.
Employing this type of psychological warfare is one thing, based on deception. But what you really want to do is make consistent small profits in order to increase your stack size, without big swings. The skilled player’s goal is to keep on making incremental profits. Avoid coin flips and seek spots where you have an edge.
Of course if you end up in a big pot that seems advantageous, by all means play it. By avoiding these big pots, you give away too much in missed opportunities.
One of the secrets of great tournament players that they do not tell you is the following: build a big stack early on at the risk of early elimination. Once you get this big stack, use it as the weapon to scare your opponents and win many battles.
